Several man-made structures have been developed to serve different purposes. The operating environment of these structures may include one or more of land, water, air and outer space. In most situations, these structures are directly or indirectly exposed to the surrounding environment. As a result, these structures may be adversely influenced by undesirable effects of the environment.
One category of such undesirable effects is associated with forces emanating from the environment and acting upon these structures. In particular, structures operating in any environment are susceptible to disturbing forces, such as mechanical forces. These forces are transmitted to structures through direct physical contact through one or more physical media. The undesirable effects of such mechanical forces may range from those that mildly affect operability of these structures to those which threaten the very existence of these structures. For example, several structures require maintenance of physical stability in order to operate properly. However, mechanical forces may disturb the physical stability of a structure by causing an undesirable change in position and/or orientation of one or more parts of a structure.
Accordingly, disturbing forces likely to be experienced in the environment need to be duly considered while designing and/or constructing these structures. However, due to practicalities, several assumptions are made about these disturbing forces. Further, in the interest of reducing costs, in many cases such disturbing forces are ignored if their likelihood of occurrence is rare. On the other hand, in cases where evaluation of the undesired effects of disturbing forces is not performed for whatever reasons, structures may be “over engineered” resulting in increased costs and/or human efforts.
Therefore, there is a need for methods, systems and apparatus for providing stability to structures in the presence of disturbing forces, such as for example, mechanical forces acting on the structures. In particular, there is a need for simple and effective techniques of providing stability to structures against disturbing forces. This need and other needs are satisfied by the various aspects of the present disclosure.